Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by staff writer Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, how's it going there now? Our listeners can't see you that they should know. You're very meaty, and if ever I were hard pressed and forgot my lunch tea, I I don't blame you for that. I've often looked at myself and thought, you know, if it really came down to it, I could eat myself. Just take a bite out of your arm pretty much. You know, I'd start with the arm. It seems logical. I since I'm so medy, it's tough for me to bend over and bite my own thigh. So yeah, I'd start with my arm. It just makes sense. I don't think I eat myself, no, and I wouldn't eat you either. You being a redhead, I imagine you're pretty spicy, plus your little ropey. Actually, I don't imagine there's much to eat on there. Moving along, cannibalism. It's a hot topic, apparently because we're talking about it. Um. You know, there's a few different kinds of cannibalism. Okay, well, um, there's endo cannibalism, which is eating people in your own like kin group, you know, family members, that kind of think. Usually it's a way of ingesting power and keeping it in a lineage, or showing respect, that kind of thing. It sounds that could be easier just to inherit Grandma's diamonds and wear them. But you're suggesting I eat her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually. Um. And then there's in exo cannibalism. I'm sorry. Exo cannibalism is the exact opposite, eating people outside of your your kinship or your kin group. Um. And usually it's a out of disrespect vanquished foe, somebody you you defeated. You're saying I'm gonna eat you, dude. That not only am I going to kill you, I'm gonna eat you too, um, which is just bad for everybody except for the person who's eating the other person. Then the third one is survival cannibalism. This is like tea. Yes, that's precisely what it is. It's it's people. It's probably the worst form of cannibalism. I don't mean to to put any kind of um, you know, Western values on the practice of cannibalism, because you can only judge a culture by its own standards cultural relativism. But the thing is survival cannibalism uh takes place outside of cultures that have some form of ritualization of cannibalism. These are people who are under the most dire of circumstances and to survive themselves have to ingest human flesh. Uh. There's one really notable uh example that happened in the US, Uh, the Donner Party. Right, this is true, Okay, So so clear this up for me then, um, as I understand there's discrepancy over whether or not the Donner Party actually eight one another there was any cannibalism involved. As the cannibalism factor fiction, it's fact. It's fact, and there's a bit of a story behind it. It's not as simple as you know. Girl never boys, hungry boy eats girl. Let me paint a picture for you. April eighteen forty six, We've got a bunch of gung ho Americans blazing a trail for the wild West. They were en route to San Francisco from Springfield, Illinois. They were going to take the California Trail. It was George Donner and his brother Jacob, and they met up with James Reid, and they were thirty three of them together. They were called the Donna Read Party, not to be confused with the Donna Read Party, known at the time for their tasteful high heels and strings of pearls, right, which was kind of weird during westward expansion. Indeed, there were new vacuum cleaners involved at that point in time, and anyway, so the Donna Read Party let me not clip any of my syllables off there, the Donna Reads set out, and like any good westward expansion story, as they pushed west, they picked up more people, and they had thirty three members originally, and they just kept mushrooming and mushrooming, and more and more were joined, and later on the party would break apart into factions because some people heard of the shortcut called the Hastings cut Off, and they decided that they were tried. I was supposed to shave some time off their trip, which was going to take six months. It ended up taking them two years. Yeah. No, it wasn't an entirely unfounded decision to split off and take the Hastings cut off, right, because they were actually going to meet up with the guy who discovered this new pass, Lankford Hastings. So I mean, it's not like they were like, yeah, I heard about this, you know that kind of thing. They like the guy was there waiting for him, um, and they were going to meet up with him, and he was going to take him the rest of the way right And it would have been perfect except that he left before they got there, and so they decided they would try the path on their own. And it was very very treacherous, and to make matters even more ominous along the way, Hastings left them. No, it's saying things like this trail is much worse than I thought. Turned back, now, save yourselves. Well back at ground zero, where the rest of the donner Re party was camped out, people were just sort of hanging tight. They were laying low because it was winter at this point. It was very very cold. They were in the Sierra Nevados. It was very hard to diversh the terrain and things reading a little bit dire. People were getting old, they were getting hungry, and they were starting to die, and so a group decided that since they were the strongest and the hardiest, they were going to branch off too, for Lauren Hope exactly. The for Lauren Hope group also called the Snowshoet group because they made little snowshoes for themselves to set out in the snow. So they go off looking for help. The people back at camp they're doing everything they can just to stay alive. Like they've literally had to settle in for the winter. They aren't trying to move any further as a large group. Oh now they're down to their pack animals. They're starting to eat their horses. Then they started hunting, and because it's winter, it's very hard to find prey, So then they turned to eating their dogs, which I found curious that you would eat your pack animals and then hunt and then eat your dogs, because I love my dogs, but compared to a good pack animal, all three of them are totally useless. Um. And then the hunting part, why would you do that in between? Why wouldn't you hunt first and then maybe the dogs and then the pack animals and then humans. I can't really speak to their logic, but after the dogs, they tried boiling their blankets and gathering twigs from the forest and making a very strange glue like soup. I might have even tried that first. Well. And then this is where it gets really really juicy. The first human died, and this is corpse lying there. People are looking at it and just you know, starting to wonder and that they ended up leaving him behind. They did, yeah, they did not. Not two times in a row though, No, because at this point the Snowshoe group for Lauren Hope back with them. Now the same thing has happened. The first person has died, and they've decided times are this rough, We're gonna go ahead and show down. So they start some some ground rules. They decide that they're not gonna eat anyone they related to, and they're not going to kill anyone for food. If someone die, their fair game, quite literally, thank you for them. People were dropping left and right there you go. But then things got heated up a little bit when a young guy, like an actual young person died. Jay Fosdick and Mrs Foster went ahead and cut him up and hate him and fed him to the Native American guys, I understand, right, And Jacks father did not like that, and he shot them and killed them, which is totally against the rules as well, I imagine exactly, so things are really falling apart by this point, I think when they ate the first fight of flesh, things had fallen apart fully. Well, it gets even worse, well because then people start fabricating stories about what rules they did and didn't break. And eventually, when people start coming back to camp and the rescue workers finally move in to rescue all the disparate groups that exist all across this here in Nevada's by now they find that one guy is like cooking people. Louis Keysburg. Yeah, he was like the rescue parties came in groups and could only take a certain number of people out at a time, right, um, and he was left behind but I think four other people and uh, when the rescue party finally came back to get him, he was sitting there, fat and happy, with several delightful dishes featuring human flesh cooking around him. And the real kicker of the whole thing was that there were two perfectly good ox legs, uh sitting there and he was eating the humans. So he he chewed them peck animal and apparently dogs and and you know, the glue like soup and just went right to the to the cannibalism, because I guess he liked it, and he was accused of murdering the people. He said, no, no, no, they died of starvation. And what's more, I didn't like it. I didn't like eating it, but I sure ate them up. And at this point in time, the media had gotten wind of the Donner Reed party and they started publishing all sorts of grizzly details of the journey. And you know, I really have to sympathize with them, because their conditions were rough. People were dying left and right. Who knows what was going through their minds. Who knows if if they were even in their right minds at this point in time, And a lot of the legends died with them because people found that it was very painful to talk about. And what's more, they tried to do the right thing. Even after they had eaten these people, boiled their flesh and and you know, washed down their gullets with snow, what have you. They tried to give the bones a proper burial. And because of that, there's not a lot of anthropological evidence that cannibalism did exist. So we're going off of these oral accounts, right which I think they're pretty much concrete. I mean, I don't think people would say, you know, we ate other people when you didn't. Not not in this society. Wow, you can make that decision for yourself when you read how the Dinner party worked on how staff works dot com. We're moral this than thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined as always by staff writer Josh Clark. Hey, Candice, how's it going there now? Our listeners can't see you that they should know. You're very meaty, and if ever I were hard pressed and forgot my lunch tea, I I don't blame you for that. I've often looked at myself and thought, you know, if it really came down to it, I could eat myself. Just take a bite out of your arm pretty much. You know, I'd start with the arm. It seems logical. I since I'm so medy, it's tough for me to bend over and bite my own thigh. So yeah, I'd start with my arm. It just makes sense. I don't think I eat myself, no, and I wouldn't eat you either. You being a redhead, I imagine you're pretty spicy, plus your little ropey. Actually, I don't imagine there's much to eat on there. Moving along, cannibalism. It's a hot topic, apparently because we're talking about it. Um. You know, there's a few different kinds of cannibalism. Okay, well, um, there's endo cannibalism, which is eating people in your own like kin group, you know, family members, that kind of think. Usually it's a way of ingesting power and keeping it in a lineage, or showing respect, that kind of thing. It sounds that could be easier just to inherit Grandma's diamonds and wear them. But you're suggesting I eat her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually. Um. And then there's in exo cannibalism. I'm sorry. Exo cannibalism is the exact opposite, eating people outside of your your kinship or your kin group. Um. And usually it's a out of disrespect vanquished foe, somebody you you defeated. You're saying I'm gonna eat you, dude. That not only am I going to kill you, I'm gonna eat you too, um, which is just bad for everybody except for the person who's eating the other person. Then the third one is survival cannibalism. This is like tea. Yes, that's precisely what it is. It's it's people. It's probably the worst form of cannibalism. I don't mean to to put any kind of um, you know, Western values on the practice of cannibalism, because you can only judge a culture by its own standards cultural relativism. But the thing is survival cannibalism uh takes place outside of cultures that have some form of ritualization of cannibalism. These are people who are under the most dire of circumstances and to survive themselves have to ingest human flesh. Uh. There's one really notable uh example that happened in the US, Uh, the Donner Party. Right, this is true, Okay, So so clear this up for me then, um, as I understand there's discrepancy over whether or not the Donner Party actually eight one another there was any cannibalism involved. As the cannibalism factor fiction, it's fact. It's fact, and there's a bit of a story behind it. It's not as simple as you know. Girl never boys, hungry boy eats girl. Let me paint a picture for you. April eighteen forty six, We've got a bunch of gung ho Americans blazing a trail for the wild West. They were en route to San Francisco from Springfield, Illinois. They were going to take the California Trail. It was George Donner and his brother Jacob, and they met up with James Reid, and they were thirty three of them together. They were called the Donna Read Party, not to be confused with the Donna Read Party, known at the time for their tasteful high heels and strings of pearls, right, which was kind of weird during westward expansion. Indeed, there were new vacuum cleaners involved at that point in time, and anyway, so the Donna Read Party let me not clip any of my syllables off there, the Donna Reads set out, and like any good westward expansion story, as they pushed west, they picked up more people, and they had thirty three members originally, and they just kept mushrooming and mushrooming, and more and more were joined, and later on the party would break apart into factions because some people heard of the shortcut called the Hastings cut Off, and they decided that they were tried. I was supposed to shave some time off their trip, which was going to take six months. It ended up taking them two years. Yeah. No, it wasn't an entirely unfounded decision to split off and take the Hastings cut off, right, because they were actually going to meet up with the guy who discovered this new pass, Lankford Hastings. So I mean, it's not like they were like, yeah, I heard about this, you know that kind of thing. They like the guy was there waiting for him, um, and they were going to meet up with him, and he was going to take him the rest of the way right And it would have been perfect except that he left before they got there, and so they decided they would try the path on their own. And it was very very treacherous, and to make matters even more ominous along the way, Hastings left them. No, it's saying things like this trail is much worse than I thought. Turned back, now, save yourselves. Well back at ground zero, where the rest of the donner Re party was camped out, people were just sort of hanging tight. They were laying low because it was winter at this point. It was very very cold. They were in the Sierra Nevados. It was very hard to diversh the terrain and things reading a little bit dire. People were getting old, they were getting hungry, and they were starting to die, and so a group decided that since they were the strongest and the hardiest, they were going to branch off too, for Lauren Hope exactly. The for Lauren Hope group also called the Snowshoet group because they made little snowshoes for themselves to set out in the snow. So they go off looking for help. The people back at camp they're doing everything they can just to stay alive. Like they've literally had to settle in for the winter. They aren't trying to move any further as a large group. Oh now they're down to their pack animals. They're starting to eat their horses. Then they started hunting, and because it's winter, it's very hard to find prey, So then they turned to eating their dogs, which I found curious that you would eat your pack animals and then hunt and then eat your dogs, because I love my dogs, but compared to a good pack animal, all three of them are totally useless. Um. And then the hunting part, why would you do that in between? Why wouldn't you hunt first and then maybe the dogs and then the pack animals and then humans. I can't really speak to their logic, but after the dogs, they tried boiling their blankets and gathering twigs from the forest and making a very strange glue like soup. I might have even tried that first. Well. And then this is where it gets really really juicy. The first human died, and this is corpse lying there. People are looking at it and just you know, starting to wonder and that they ended up leaving him behind. They did, yeah, they did not. Not two times in a row though, No, because at this point the Snowshoe group for Lauren Hope back with them. Now the same thing has happened. The first person has died, and they've decided times are this rough, We're gonna go ahead and show down. So they start some some ground rules. They decide that they're not gonna eat anyone they related to, and they're not going to kill anyone for food. If someone die, their fair game, quite literally, thank you for them. People were dropping left and right there you go. But then things got heated up a little bit when a young guy, like an actual young person died. Jay Fosdick and Mrs Foster went ahead and cut him up and hate him and fed him to the Native American guys, I understand, right, And Jacks father did not like that, and he shot them and killed them, which is totally against the rules as well, I imagine exactly, so things are really falling apart by this point, I think when they ate the first fight of flesh, things had fallen apart fully. Well, it gets even worse, well because then people start fabricating stories about what rules they did and didn't break. And eventually, when people start coming back to camp and the rescue workers finally move in to rescue all the disparate groups that exist all across this here in Nevada's by now they find that one guy is like cooking people. Louis Keysburg. Yeah, he was like the rescue parties came in groups and could only take a certain number of people out at a time, right, um, and he was left behind but I think four other people and uh, when the rescue party finally came back to get him, he was sitting there, fat and happy, with several delightful dishes featuring human flesh cooking around him. And the real kicker of the whole thing was that there were two perfectly good ox legs, uh sitting there and he was eating the humans. So he he chewed them peck animal and apparently dogs and and you know, the glue like soup and just went right to the to the cannibalism, because I guess he liked it, and he was accused of murdering the people. He said, no, no, no, they died of starvation. And what's more, I didn't like it. I didn't like eating it, but I sure ate them up. And at this point in time, the media had gotten wind of the Donner Reed party and they started publishing all sorts of grizzly details of the journey. And you know, I really have to sympathize with them, because their conditions were rough. People were dying left and right. Who knows what was going through their minds. Who knows if if they were even in their right minds at this point in time, And a lot of the legends died with them because people found that it was very painful to talk about. And what's more, they tried to do the right thing. Even after they had eaten these people, boiled their flesh and and you know, washed down their gullets with snow, what have you. They tried to give the bones a proper burial. And because of that, there's not a lot of anthropological evidence that cannibalism did exist. So we're going off of these oral accounts, right which I think they're pretty much concrete. I mean, I don't think people would say, you know, we ate other people when you didn't. Not not in this society. Wow, you can make that decision for yourself when you read how the Dinner party worked on how staff works dot com. We're moral this than thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com